


Time of Your Life

by Liralen



Category: Baseball RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-12
Updated: 2012-05-12
Packaged: 2017-11-05 06:04:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/403214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liralen/pseuds/Liralen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The A's make the playoffs, the champagne flows, and Huston Street is feeling no pain. There'll be time for that later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time of Your Life

Later, when the drunk wears off and the corners of your mouth crack and bleed from a smile held too long, when you wake up with your face smashed in the corner of Bobby Crosby's elbow and every pull and tear and bruise comes racing to the surface, when you open your mouth to ask what time it is and find your voice has rusted through with laughter, you'll look back at this night and realize that 23 years into the game you've already had the time of your life.  
  
*  
  
"Hey, Hus, did your mom write a note so you could be here?"  
  
"Will someone check the kid's I.D.? He's tryna steal my beer!"  
  
High scratchy Southern voice, little-boy laugh and flash of hair; Swisher. Tangled up in your arms and you don't know who's holding who, sweat and champagne and a beer bottle, right, you've got an objective here. Nothing to the man without the mission. Your father said that to you once, or maybe it was someone else. He was a big man, your father, bigger than Swish, although Swish is getting bigger too, stretching up and swimming away, thought-bubble laughter drifting above his head. Your knees touch the ground and give.  
  
"Aw, jesus," his voice floats down to you, "take a breath, kid. You puke on my shoes'n I'ma fuckin kill you."  
  
Stupid, you're not a kid. Slug your fist sideways into the top of his sneaker, which isn't that cool anyway. You're not gonna puke, you gotta get to the mound, they're calling for you...  
  
*  
  
God damn, but that ball went a long way.  
  
Somewhere you are pretty sure Dan Haren is cursing you and your parents and your future generations, getting progressively more obscene until he starts using things that aren't real words, just violence made verbal. Somewhere your father is turning off the TV and pouring himself another scotch. But not here. Here, no one meets your eyes, and no one ventures toward the corner of the dugout where you hole yourself up with the gatorade cups and the ten-pound bag of sunflower seeds. Half punishment, but half fear, too, as if failure is a communicable disease. No one believes this is just a slump anymore, you're spiraling like a plane shot down from the sky and no one wants to be caught in the wreckage.  
  
So you jump when he sits next to you, nervous, sure, expecting a cuff to the back of the head more than the arm around your shoulders. So maybe not everyone, exactly. Or maybe he remembers what it's like to wear bad luck in the brim of his cap, maybe he remembers when he was young and unlucky and it was his head they were calling for. Maybe you should stop thinking, because the fact is he's got his arm around you, and that's a hell of a lot more than you could ever ask for.  
  
*  
  
"You don't got anything to do, bro. It's over," Zito says, and for a minute you think maybe he's even drunker, finishing a conversation he started with someone else; then you realize your mouth is still moving, saying _put me in put me in, it's okay, I can do it_ and you snap back into yourself and shut your jaw on the words.  
  
You're leaned into him, where the hell are you? still in the clubhouse, your head balanced on his shoulder and his aftershave smells good doused in Cristal. The reporters are clearing out, Fosse already half drunk and staying behind to join the party, 'cause he's not really the media, he's one of you, and he's done this better than any of you.  
  
"Oh god," you moan, bits and tatters flashing back, "I talked to Foss. On camera. Oh god, why'd you let me do that!"  
  
" _Let you?_ It was worth more than my life to try and _stop you_ , you big drunk Texan fuck." You twitch at that, want to say crossly _don't bring Texas into this_ , but Zito says it like an endearment, edge of a smile in his voice and his eyes all dark and overheated, so you think maybe this whole thing where you shut the fuck up is a good course of action to continue. "Anyway, it wasn't that bad. After you declared your undying love for me for, like, maybe the fourth time, I took over the interview, and you spent most of the rest of it either falling asleep or cracking up."  
  
"Bobby," you mumble, the memory rising distantly like a slide coming into focus. "Kept making these stupid faces at me, tryna make me laugh. Fucker."  
  
Zito nods solemnly, says in a straight flat voice, "It's okay, his face makes me laugh, too," and you're thrown for a good five seconds, the disconnect between his expression and his words leaving you off-balance, unsure huffs of laughter bursting painfully from your chest.  
  
Zito shakes his head, the deadpan mask erasing like an etch-a-sketch, and you reach out to touch him, want to feel the new skin of his smile underneath, but he grabs your hand while it's still fumbling in midair. Brings it down to the ground but leaves it tangled with his, on the ground in between you, and that pulls you a little off-kilter, tips your body in his direction and so you go with the motion, easy as falling off the mound. Brief clumsy slide of your cheek across his chin, raking warmth, and then you've got your mouth on his, perfect bitten place that you've wanted to taste all night, warm and chapped and stung with alcohol and so perfect, just so sweet.  
  
Clean as a sheet. Your mind's an unpanicked blank, stripped of memory and reason and any sense of self-preservation. No need to worry about the fall, 'cause you can fly. You always could but you forgot somehow, and now you know again, and nothing's ever gonna touch you. It's maybe the most important thought you've ever had, and you try in a vague breathless way to communicate it to Zito, "I can _fly_ ," but he just shushes you and goes on kissing your mouth. That's okay, though, cause you know somehow that Zito already knows. Zito can see it inside you, this thing bristling with wings, ready to break free, and when it does nothing's ever gonna bring you down.


End file.
